Tag Archives: Internet Safety Technical Task Force

Zach Martin, editor of CR80 News recently published an article about the identity and age verification issues we are facing in social networks.You definitely should check it out but in case you don’t have time here are some important highlights:

When trying to get into a bar or club there is typically someone at the door checking IDs. But on social networking sites there is no bouncer, which means there’s no way to tell whether you’re corresponding with a 15-year-old girl or a 32-year-old man.

It’s the same no matter where you go. MySpace, Facebook, and professional networking site LinkedIn, do little to make sure people are who they claim to be. “There is a general feeling that social networking is the wild west of identity management and a lot of bad things happen because proper controls haven’t been put in place,” says Roger K. Sullivan, president of the Liberty Alliance Project management board.

The stories range from the tame to the tragic.

A student not happy with an administrator at school creates a profile on a social networking site. Even though the student is a woman she creates a profile that is a man and then flirts with the administrator in order to cause her embarrassment later.

At a Catholic school in the Chicago suburbs, an administrator monitors the popular social sites on a regular basis just to make sure nothing out of the ordinary is happening. She has run into instances where students create accounts in other peoples’ names – people who actually exist – and then make false statements. For example, one student set up an account as a real person from another school and made statements about the student’s sexual proclivities while giving out her real phone number.

In 2006, a fake profile led to the suicide of a 13-year-old Missouri girl. A classmate’s mother originally created the profile to find out if Megan Meier was saying anything bad about her daughter. But then it was used to gain Meier’s confidence and then to tear her down. Angry messages went back and forth, and it ended with Meier hanging herself.

There’s also the need to prevent pedophiles from contacting children online. MySpace has agreed with different states’ attorney generals to adopt better technologies that will help identify underage users so they can be protected from predators, but the social networking site hasn’t figured out how it’s going to do it.

The vast majority of sites don’t do anything to try to confirm the identities of members. The sites also don’t want to absorb the cost of trying to prove the identity of their members. Also, identifying minors is almost impossible because there isn’t enough information out there to authenticate their identity.

But this may all change. As sites become more scrutinized they will have to take steps to make sure people are who they say. “There will be a trend to use a third party that leverages database information that will be able to vouch for you and provide a more certain level of identification,” says Eric Skinner, chief technology officer at Entrust, an Addison, Texas-based digital identification vendor.

There are a handful of vendors that are offering online identity vetting. Most are working with financial institutions, but they see business opportunities with the social networking sites.

The article goes on to describe some social networks and their use of identity verification including one of our clients FunkySexyCool and their use of our system.It also discusses the privacy concerns related to age verification of minors and provides a possible solution the Liberty Alliance is discussing essentially related to ID 2.0

Liberty Alliance’s Sullivan, who is also vice president of Oracle Identity Management, says it’s only a matter of time before social networking sites offer tiers of identification assurance, which could be used to confirm a minor’s identity. For example, if a 14 year old wanted to sign up on MySpace without a parents’ permission they would be placed on the lowest ID tier. “They would be put into a question mark bucket,” Sullivan says.

But if one parent went online and confirmed his child’s identity they would be raised up a tier. If both parents did it they would go up two tiers. The parents would be authenticated through public records and online databases.

Eventually there would be a fourth tier as well. A minor would physically go to atrusted source with documents that prove their age and identity. These identity assurance sources don’t exist, but it’s something the Liberty Alliance is working toward, Sullivan says.

The next task force meeting will be later this month and I’m looking forward to seeing how the conversation progresses.I firmly believe we can find several ways to combat the issues at hand including both an educational approach and technological approach.

On another note, I’m off to the RSA Conference next week. IDology has a booth this year so if you are in San Fran, stop by and see us.